The endless ski run...

Christoph Schrahe, a very exacting German cartographer has undertaken to check ski runs lengths claimed by European ski resorts as a way to boast their total size. He's found out that some of the biggest ski resorts, there, exaggerate the length of their ski runs by up to 150 per cent.

This is pretty stupid thing to measure a resort size by the total length of its ski trails. It should be measured in acres or in km2, like we do it on this side of the Atlantic. The sneakiest resort of all is Switzerland's 4 Valleys with a coefficient of exaggeration at 120%, while France's 3 Vallée only had 493 of pistes, a significant 22% below what they claim officially.

When Schrahe could only find 172km out of the 265km claimed by Flaine's Grand Massif in France, the resort management was quick to explain that they added 57% to take into account the turns made by visitors. Now, have you ever heard someone say “last night, I ate 89 feet of spaghetti...” ? I personally have yet to hear that one...